The Sad Case of Anna Nicole Smith

By now, most folks have Anna Nicole Smith fatigue. I know I do. During a February 9, 2007 broadcast of the John Gambling Show on WABC Radio in New York City, Fox News commentator Chris Wallace wryly observed that the extensive coverage of Ms. Smith's passing made him think that he "was witnessing the death of a head of state."

So why should we care about Anna Nicole Smith? Because this woman's very sad and predictable demise is a wakeup call to the Paris-Lindsay-Britney crowd and all other would-be bimbos who worship out-of-control celebrities.

Andrea Peyser has written an excellent column about this underreported aspect of Anna Nicole Smith ("This belle tolls for thee, bimbos"). It can be found on Page 4 of the February 10, 2007 edition of The New York Post.

Smith, 39, died suddenly at a Florida hotel on February 8, 2007. A preliminary autopsy was inconclusive. The voluptuous former Playboy vixen and TrimSpa pitchwoman had long been suspected of alcohol and prescription drug abuse. A toxicology report will be issued in several weeks.

The death of Anna Nicole Smith is a huge mystery, which is not terribly surprising because everything about this lady was outsized, including her nearly six-foot height, gargantuan enhanced chest, and wild weight swings, which were reportedly as much as 70 pounds. She was also incredibly litigious, having spawned lawsuits that will long outlive her.

In 1994, the year after her first appearance in Playboy, Anna Nicole Smith, then 26, shocked the world by marrying 89-year-old billionaire Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall II. Marshall, a former trusts and estates professor at Yale Law School, met Smith in 1991 when she was dancing at a topless bar. According to a February 9, 2007 New York Post article, Marshall was confined to a wheelchair at the time. In a startling photograph of the couple kissing, it looked like Smith was giving Marshall mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

That image evoked hysterical laughter and disgust. The picture provided incredible fodder for late-night television comics. I remember my father, then 72, being nauseated by it.

But there was a very serious and tragic aspect to the Smith-Marshall marriage. Smith had a son, Daniel, then age seven. At the time, I couldn't help thinking how psychologically screwed up that kid was going to be. It was tough enough having a mother who was Playboy Playmate of the Year. How the hell did Anna tell her boy that she was marrying a man almost four times her age?

Daniel died mysteriously last fall of a reported methadone mishap at age 20, only three days after Smith gave birth to a baby girl, Danielynn. While the immediate cause of Daniel's death was drug-related, the bizarre circumstances of his upbringing must have been a contributing factor.

In addition to Danielynn, Ms. Smith leaves behind several high profile lawsuits. Marshall died with a $1.6 billion fortune after being married to Anna for only 14 months. These assets have been the subject of an 11-year tug-of-war between Ms. Smith and one of J. Howard's sons, E. Pierce Marshall, who is also now deceased. A Federal court awarded Anna Nicole Smith over $400 million of the elder Marshall's estate. That judgment was reduced to $88 million after a second trial, and overturned completely on appeal. Last May, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Smith could sue again for her marital share, so this legal booby trap will continue to confound experts for quite some time.

Meanwhile, there's a paternity suit going on to determine the identity of Danielynn's father. Smith's attorney, Howard K. Stern, who participated in a non-binding "marriage" ceremony with Smith in the Bahamas, was the first to claim fatherhood. But photographer Larry Birkhead has said that he fathered Danielynn with Anna before Stern became involved with the blonde bombshell. And on February 10, 2007, the New York Post reported that a third candidate had emerged: Prince Frederic von Anhalt, husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor.

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Whoever prevails will be guardian of Danielynn and whatever share of the Marshall estate that may be due her. And while these three characters wrangle over Marshall's money, the fate of a motherless baby girl remains uncertain.

Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe share many biographical similarities. Maybe that's why Smith idolized Monroe. Both women came from troubled backgrounds.

Smith grew up in the working-class hamlet of Mexia (pronounced Ma-hay-ah), Texas. According to a May 14, 1956 Time Magazine cover story (available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,808436,00.html), Monroe spent much of her childhood in a semi-slum outside Los Angeles.

Both women had little formal education. According to a February 9, 2007 New York Times report, Smith was a ninth-grade dropout. Monroe didn't finish high school either.

Both came from broken homes. According to the 1956 Time story, Monroe's father skipped out before she was born, and her mother was confined to a mental institution. Marilyn grew up in a series of abusive foster homes and an orphanage. Smith's father was also AWOL during her childhood.

Smith and Monroe both had brief marriages as teenagers. According to the New York Times story, Smith married a short order cook. Monroe married an aircraft factory worker. Both were divorced by age twenty.

And, both, of course, famously posed nude. Monroe was a birthday suit calendar cutie, but she kept her clothes on when she graced Playboy's cover in 1953. Smith stripped for Playboy in 1993. Both had film careers, abused prescription drugs and alcohol, and died under mysterious circumstances. During their later years, Smith and Monroe were both emotionally unstable. Monroe was notoriously difficult to deal with on the set and often arrived late for work. Smith often appeared drugged and/or inebriated in public.

Both women were highly dependent on others. Arthur Miller, one of Monroe's two husbands (the other was Joe DiMaggio), in his 1987 autobiography Timebends: A Life, said that vaunted acting coaches Lee and Paula Strasberg exercised a "sinister" influence over Monroe. Geraldo Rivera, on a recent "Hannity & Colmes" television broadcast, similarly characterized the relationship between Howard K. Stern and Smith.

Monroe died at age 36, Smith at 39.

All that being said, there were important differences between them. Monroe aspired to be a serious actress, and she partially succeeded. She starred alongside such leading men as Laurence Olivier, Clark Gable, and Joseph Cotten. Although frequently cast as the blonde bimbo, Monroe played in such quality films as 1953's "Niagara", a racy drama about a young woman's elaborate plot to kill her older husband.

In 1955, Monroe started her own production company. She was also a pretty good singer.

Smith's film credits, by contrast, are limited to a handful of B-list movies. Her television program, "The Anna Nicole Show", broadcast on the E! Network from 2002 to 2004, was a freakish display of an overweight and addled has-been going about her daily life. Smith was known to crash parties, and, on at least one occasion, had to be restrained from taking her top off on live television.

If Smith seems base and shallow in comparison to Monroe, it's because society is far coarser today than it was in the 1950s. We live in a world that worships celebrity and beauty. Some of this culture has existed since Hollywood's earliest days, but now it's totally out of control. Most Hollywood actresses have had some kind of surgery. Steroid use is rampant in professional sports. Eating disorders abound. Obsession with bodily perfection has infected the general public, including high school students.

Hey, I appreciate a well-endowed woman as much as the next guy, but we need to teach our children that it's more important to have plenty upstairs than a lot up top.

Ms. Smith had a serious weight problem. She was tall and large-boned. I question whether it was healthy for her to have weighed a reported 138 pounds at the time of her death and suspect that her extreme weight fluctuations figured in her untimely demise. By the way, the New York Post reported on February 9 that Smith and the distributors of TrimSpa are defendants in a lawsuit for marketing fraud.

Fame is a flaming, double-edged sword. Some people can handle it. Others get burned. Whatever the final autopsy results show, Ms. Smith was clearly on a path to self-destruction.

It is easy to see how a star frequently playing fictional characters and hobnobbing with phonies could have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. A person without a strong sense of self is particularly vulnerable. Anna Nicole Smith made millions, spent money like it was water, declared bankruptcy, and wound up dead before she was forty.

America has always admired the famous and will continue to do so. That's not necessarily bad. True heroes can inspire people to do great things. Many Hollywoood actors are good and decent people who have contributed much to society. You don't see Clint Eastwood or Jodie Foster staggering around catatonic at all hours. Whether they admit it or not, celebrities are role models, and Anna Nicole Smith set a horrific example.

Anna Nicole Smith is the story that keeps on giving. New lurid details about this woman emerge every day.

Ms. Smith was a profoundly dysfunctional person who unwittingly inflicted tremendous damage upon her children. Her undoing is a cautionary tale.

Breast in peace, Anna. You showed us all how not to live.